With the release of the 1979 sci-fi movie Alien, Ridley Scott has become one of the pioneers of the cosmic science fiction genre. Although the movie was far from being an instant hit, it has aged like a fine wine to become a cult classic.
Also, the movie opened the doors for a huge franchise, and directors like James Cameron and David Fincher followed in the footsteps of the legendary filmmaker. However, 20th Century Studios was keen on merging the Predator series after 25 years of the original Alien movie. Scott and Cameron were set to develop a fifth Alien movie but the studio has shattered their vision with the release of Alien vs. Predator in 2004.
A Ridley Scott and James Cameron Collaboration Almost Happened
Experiencing the collaboration of two masters of sci-fi in a franchise close to their hearts would be something enormous. James Cameron was pretty rooted in the idea of a fifth Alien movie as he planned it with Ridley Scott to direct. Revealing details of the potential Alien 5, Cameron wrote on a Reddit AMA explaining his side of the narrative.
“I don’t remember the timing exactly, but I might have been making The Abyss at that time, also for Fox. What came up was the idea of doing Alien 5. And at one point I pitched that I would write it and produce it, and Ridley would direct it, and we had lunch talking about this, and we were in violent agreement, then nothing happened.”
Cameron was not very fond of injecting the Predator franchise into the Alien series, in fact, he warned the studio not to move ahead with the project. “What happened was Fox went ahead with Aliens vs. Predator and I said, ‘I really don’t recommend that, you’ll ruin the franchise,” Cameron continued. “It’s like Universal doing Dracula versus The Werewolf, and then I lost interest in doing an Alien film,” he added. Eventually, the idea of the Scott-Cameron collaboration was shattered by the Aliens vs. Predator movie.
Ridley Scott Thinks Alien vs. Predator Was A ‘Daft Idea’
Scott was never fond of dragging his original Alien movie into a franchise. “You get to the point when you say, ‘Okay, it’s dead in the water,’” he told The Hollywood Reporter indicating the fact that it was a bad idea to extend the series forcefully. He was also very critical of merging the Predator series with Alien, “I think Alien vs. Predator was a daft idea,” he added.
“And I’m not sure it did very well or not, I don’t know. But it somehow brought down the beast. And I said to them, ‘Listen, you can resurrect this, but we have to go back to scratch and go to a prequel, if you like.’ So we go to Prometheus, which was not bad actually. But you know, there’s no alien in it, except the baby at the end that showed, itself, the possibility. I mean, it had the silhouette of an alien, right?”
The original Alien concept, as Scott said, was “uniquely attached to Mother Nature.” It simply “comes off a wood beetle that will lay eggs inside some unsuspecting insect. And in so doing, the form of the egg will become the host for this new creature.” For Scott, that is downright hideous But that was “what it was. And you can’t keep repeating that because the joke gets boring.” Undoubtedly, both Scott and Cameron believed that Alien vs. Predator had ruined the integrity of the franchise yet Fox brought another sequel to the Aliens vs. Predator movie in 2007.
